Fungi encyclopedia
A reference for the fungi you actually find
Each entry describes one species the way you meet it in the field — the cap and its surface, what sits underneath, the stipe and its base, the spore print colour, the substrate it fruits from, and the species most often confused with it.
Showing results for “Hoof Fungus (Iceman Fungus)”
Sandy Stiltball
Puffballs
A striking fungus with a tall, woody, shaggily scaled stalk rising from a buried sac-like volva and topped by a flattened disc of rusty-brown spore powder. It grows on dry, sandy, nutrient-poor soil.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Witch's Butter
Jellies
A vivid golden-yellow jelly fungus forming convoluted, brain-like blobs on dead branches, most conspicuous in wet winter weather. It is a parasite of crust fungi living in the same wood.
Spore print · White
White Coral
Corals & Clubs
A delicate, chalk-white coral that branches repeatedly into fine upright arms with blunt tips. Grows from soil and litter in woodland and mossy clearings.
Spore print · White
Scarlet Caterpillarclub
Other Fungi
A small bright orange club fungus that grows out of the buried pupa or larva of a moth. Digging carefully beneath the club reveals the orange-stained insect from which it arises.
Spore print · White
Crown-tipped Coral
Corals & Clubs
A wood-inhabiting coral whose every branch ends in a small crown or cup ringed with tiny points, growing in rows along rotting hardwood logs.
Spore print · White
Bleeding Broadleaf Crust
Crusts
A thick, pale, mostly flat crust that hugs dead broadleaf branches and releases a bright red juice when scratched while fresh. Its surface is smooth to slightly lumpy, with barely any turned-out edge.
Spore print · White
Tuberous Polypore
Polypores
A stout stalked polypore with a scaly ochre cap, fringed margin and large white decurrent pores, often arising from a hard, stone-like underground mass of soil-bound mycelium.
Spore print · White
Dead Man's Foot
Puffballs
A large, club- or foot-shaped fungus whose interior is packed with pea-sized chambers set in dark jelly, ripening from the top down into rusty brown dust. It grows on the poorest, most compacted ground.
Spore print · Cinnamon to rusty brown (spore mass)
Giant Club
Corals & Clubs
A conspicuous unbranched club up to 30 cm tall, shaped like a pestle with a broad wrinkled head, ochre-yellow to tan and bruising purple-brown where handled.
Spore print · White to pale ochre
Devil's Fingers
Stinkhorns
A stinkhorn that hatches from a pale egg and unfurls four to eight scarlet arms, initially joined at the tips and then splayed outward, blotched inside with dark olive spore slime.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Crystal Brain
Jellies
A watery, near-transparent jelly whose lobes are speckled with minute opaque white grains, giving it a distinctive frogspawn-like appearance on damp dead hardwood.
Spore print · White
Hare's Ear
Cups & Discs
A tan to fox-brown ear-shaped cup, split down one side and taller than wide, growing from needle litter and moss in coniferous woodland.
Spore print · White
False Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a reddish to dark brown head thrown into irregular convoluted lobes like a brain or a crumpled turban, with no ridge-and-pit honeycomb. Cut vertically it is irregularly chambered rather than one clean hollow.
Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish
Green Elf Cup
Cups & Discs
A minute turquoise cup fungus whose mycelium dyes rotting hardwood a vivid blue-green; the stained wood is far more often seen than the fruiting bodies.
Spore print · White
Cloud Ear
Jellies
A rubbery, ear- or cup-shaped bracket on dead hardwood, greyish and finely hairy on the upper surface and smooth purplish-brown beneath, shrinking to a hard flake when dry.
Spore print · White
Northern Tooth
Toothed
A massive tiered fungus that forms overlapping cream-coloured shelves high on living maple trunks, recognised by the crowded pendant spines that hang beneath each bracket instead of pores.
Spore print · White
Veined Cup
Cups & Discs
A broad, almost stalkless brown disc whose inner surface is scored with prominent radiating veins, found on damp ground in spring. A strong chlorine-like odour and the pale, mealy outer surface make it easy to recognise.
Spore print · White to cream
Tremella encephala
Jellies
A pale pink to whitish gelatinous blob with brain-like folds, growing on conifer wood alongside its host crust fungus. Cutting one in half reveals a firm white core, a feature no other jelly of this colour shows.
Spore print · White
Yellow Coral
Corals & Clubs
A bulky coral fungus with a stout white trunk and crowded lemon to sulphur-yellow branches. The white flesh characteristically stains reddish then brown where bruised.
Spore print · Pale yellow-ochre
Eastern Cauliflower Mushroom
Other Fungi
A large cream rosette built from broad, flat, concentrically zoned leaf-like lobes, growing at the base of oaks and other hardwoods in eastern North America.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Red Cage
Stinkhorns
A startling stinkhorn that hatches from a whitish egg as a hollow, spherical cage of coral-red spongy arms, with dark olive spore slime lining the inner faces of the mesh.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Jelly Rot
Crusts
A soft, gelatinous crust that turns its upper edge outward into small white hairy shelves, with a shocking orange-pink wrinkled and ridged spore surface beneath. It sprawls in overlapping sheets across fallen logs in late autumn.
Spore print · White
Crested Coral
Corals & Clubs
A small white coral fungus whose branch tips split into fine crests like miniature antlers. It grows from woodland soil and is often blackened at the base by a parasitic fungus.
Spore print · White
Common Brown Cup
Cups & Discs
A dark olive- to chocolate-brown cup fungus of woodland soil and leaf litter, appearing in spring with a paler, finely scurfy outer surface.
Spore print · White